


Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo?

by halotolerant



Category: Blackadder
Genre: 1920s, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canonical Character Death, Character death refers to those who died in canon who I've not retconned to be alive, Enemies to Lovers, First Time, M/M, No tagged characters die in the story, Period-Typical Ableism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 13:08:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: "You shouldn't have come all this way, Darling" Blackadder had stood up and now he took Kevin’s hand, half overbalancing him, shaking it theatrically and without gentleness. “You really, really shouldn’t have.”





	Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saturni_stellis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturni_stellis/gifts).



> saturni_stellis I was browsing the prompts for last-minute treats and I really liked yours - Happy Yuletide!
> 
>  **Additional Warnings** : As referenced in the tags, I have chosen to save some but not all of the characters who went over the top in 'Goodbyeee'. The various societal issues of the 1910s and 20s for anyone queer or disabled unfortunately still come to the fore. If you want exact details before reading, I have put them in the end note. Feel free to suggest tag changes.
> 
> _Mademoiselle from Armentières  
>  Parley voo,  
> Mademoiselle from Armentières  
> Parley voo,  
> You might forget the gas and shell  
> You'll never forget the Mademoiselle  
> Hinky Dinky Parley voo_   
>  **Mademoiselle from Armentières, French, German and English traditional**

“Why hello, thank you so much for coming along, and who shall I make this out to?”

His smile hadn’t changed. That was Kevin’s loudest thought, which was ridiculous all things considered. 

Blackadder’s damn silly, facetious, disingenuous smirk was exactly as it had been in Flanders, seven years and a world away. 

“Come now, don’t say you don’t know my name any more,” Kevin murmured, acid. “For all you found it so amusing. Although I dare say it does get quite confusing, eh, keeping the stories straight?”

“Darling!” 

And now the man was looking at him, really looking, awake at last. Sitting there at his little table in the middle of Hatchard’s booksellers Piccadilly (by Appointment to His Majesty the King), working through the queue of devoted admirers ready for their autographed copy of the great work. And there, on a kind of easel next to him, the resplendent volume itself: Colthurst Plays the Game! A Dashing Tale of Aerial Espionage and British Pluck in the Trenches!

“And all based on your life experience.” Kevin turned back to look at Blackadder again, relishing the dismay, the frantic calculation apparent in the furrow of his brow. “Your storied career in the Royal Flying Corps.” He leant in, allowing his voice to drop to a theatrical hiss. “I do know, none better, how long that was.”

"You shouldn't have come all this way, Darling" Blackadder had stood up and now he took Kevin’s hand, half overbalancing him, shaking it theatrically and without gentleness. “You really, really shouldn’t have.”

People in the queue behind Kevin were looking on with interest, some turning to whisper to their companions. Probably the ones making the loudest gasps were the ones who’d noticed the crutches, or his leg. Or rather, his not a leg, and the dangling empty fabric of his trousers. 

Meanwhile at Blackadder’s side a bevy of concerned-looking bookshop minions had come along in a cluster, clearing their throats. Kevin knew that he was about to be ushered away discreetly – one got to know the signs. The war pensions office had perhaps had the most efficient disposal methods, when he’d tried to get some sense out of them. On the other hand, the Dole office couldn’t be beaten for pure bureaucratic torture, and he spoke as an expert. He was quite aware he was fit for many kinds of work; the fact that he’d yet to find an employer who wanted a reminder of 1914-18 sitting in plain view every day was really not his problem to solve. But oh no, no money for you until you located and completed Form 14B, which was probably filed somewhere between unicorn horns and the log of the Marie Celeste.

These booksellers were small fry, by contrast, and he could make his scene now, easily. He could yell, he could declaim, and he could expose this odious man for what he was, just like he’d been planning on for months. 

Blackadder still had him by the hand, looking up at him flinty and full of irritation. Funny how seven years twisted the memory. He’d forgotten that Blackadder was the shorter of the two of them. 

That black hair that had so suited the name had a hint of grey at the temples now. And his eyes – his eyes had a look that Kevin knew all too well. 

“Listen, if you want to… discuss old times,” Blackadder muttered, “go to the Lyon’s corner house down the way near Piccadilly Circus – no, go to Fortnum and Mason’s. Go to Fortnum’s and wait and I’ll come along soon and buy you lunch.”

“I don’t need your charity, Blackadder.”

“No, apparently your intentions are to exert quite another leverage on my wallet.” Blackadder spoke through a gritted grin, obviously conscious of his waiting public. “And either way, I don’t relish talking to you without alcohol to hand, and plenty of it.”

Kevin stared at him. This was not the plan. The plan had been to come, treat the world to a list of all the lies in Blackadder’s supposed authorial résumé – Kevin had the interview from Britannia Literary magazine, (which was a greater work of fiction than any of the drivel in the so-called novels) still folded in his breast pocket, the specific and disprovable falsehoods underlined in red – and then… 

And then what? What to do next but take the stopping train home to his small rooms and end the day exactly as he did every other?

Whereas if he met with Blackadder he could watch the man squirm like a rat in a trap, potentially even for hours.

“Fortnum’s, then,” Kevin said, and allowed himself a smirk of his own.

\- 

It was even odds, Kevin had begun to think as he nursed his cup of tea, that Blackadder wouldn’t show up. Not that it mattered; anyone as famous as publishing legend and overnight sensation Edmund Blackadder (formerly Royal Flying Corps, decorated at the second battle of Ypres, twenty-one known kills and all the other nonsense) couldn’t stay hidden for long. 

But sure enough, and only about half an hour after Kevin had arrived – the signing queue must have been dismissed early – there was Blackadder coming through the great swing doors and over to the table, passing his umbrella to a ready waiter as would a man become entirely used to being attended.

Stupid, infuriating bastard.

Captain Blackadder had been such a familiar, such an unwanted sight at HQ, where Kevin was usually just trying to keep some kind of order in the small things, in the paperclips and the manila files and the typewriter ribbon, in case that might influence upward and impart any logic, order or method to what the Generals were deciding in their smoke-filled board rooms, drawing arrows on their maps with all his HB pencils. 

As if there hadn’t been enough to contend with, without Blackadder turning up yet another damnfool scheme or confidence trick. Tripping lightly through the trenches – that was how Kevin pictured him, always, somewhere between a Harlequin and a trickster god – laughing all the way from one artful escape to another. 

“Good afternoon, Darling,” the man said now, and drew a chair out, seating himself before Kevin could even begin to assemble his crutches under his arms such that he could rise politely, thus completely ruining the intended snub of the fact that he hadn’t planned on doing so. 

“Blackadder,” he bit out in greeting.

“Well then, get on with it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Darling, you came all the way to Piccadilly in the rain, stood in a queue for an hour at least and now you have an expression reminiscent of nothing so much as a lion coming home to the cave to discover a group of very drunk impala dancing around a fire and rubbing themselves in brown sauce. You obviously know what you want from me, so out with it, and this delightful reunion can end.”

“I want you to admit that your book is full of lies!” Kevin spoke rather louder than he’d meant; people were looking again, and he could hear, he could hear when they saw his injury and lowered their voices, pitched to pity and understanding; so hard for them, coming back, one must be forgiving. 

To his surprise, Blackadder sat back and laughed like a broken drain. 

“I don’t see what’s so very funny about you deceiving the British public.”

Falling forward again, Blackadder let out one final “Hah!” His smile did not reach his eyes. 

“Of course it’s fucking lies, Darling. It’s a series about the war that’s sold enough to keep me in whisky and cigars until I die a comfortable nonagenarian in someone else’s spouse’s bed. Do you think anyone would get those kinds of sales telling the truth?”

Kevin blinked. “But you tell people you were in the Royal Flying Corps!”

“And I dare say you tell people you lost that leg at the Front.”

“So you did notice!”

“Notice? You think I didn’t know?”

Kevin frowned and picked up his cup of tea. It had gone cold. “How would you possibly know?”

Blackadder coughed, looking away. “As for deceiving the British Public, we are speaking of a body of people who recently made Mademoiselle of Armentières one of the most popular pieces of sheet music in 1924, complete with ‘Jolly Tommy’ illustrations on the front, ready for your jazzy flapper party.”

He spoke more bitterly than Kevin might have expected. Blackadder had been no great patriot, that much had always been obvious, but wouldn’t his cynicism have protected him from disillusionment? Wouldn’t Blackadder have been expecting the kind of world they got, when they all finally marched home? 

“But your character Colthurst doesn’t help that at all!” Kevin pointed out. “He gallivants through Flanders fighting Huns bare-fisted and fixing propellers in mid-air and for some unknown reason riding bloody elephants, like he doesn’t have a care in the world! And his language! Who says pip pip tally ho hooray every time they answer a telephone?”

Blackadder had started arranging a small tower of sugar cubes. “George did.”

“George? What…? Oh. George.”

“Lt. The Honourable George Colthurst St Barleigh,” Blackadder said calmly, still unsmiling, “had a vocabulary which could be described neither as broad nor as intellectual, but it was undoubtedly distinctive, and quite unbearably cheery.”

Kevin stared at him. “You mean you wrote the books for him? In memoriam?”

Blackadder raised his eyebrow. “I wrote the books to make shedloads of money. But I suppose I had to call the idiot something. Something an idiot would be called.”

Kevin digested this, nonplussed.

“Melchett got married, did you see that?” Kevin adjusted his balance on the wooden chair. It would soon be very uncomfortable on his stump indeed; at home in Cambridgeshire he had a cushion. He usually travelled with it but had not been able to bear the idea of Blackadder seeing the thing. That fear seemed rather ridiculous now. There had never been any respect between them to lose. 

“Oh yes? To a woman, was it, this time?”

Hard not to laugh at the memory. The Gorgeous Georgina. General Melchett being even more of a walrus-faced fool than usual and oh, oh how Kevin had been longing for the moment when the penny would drop. 

And George had been gorgeous. He’d been so young. 

They’d all been young. Kevin hadn’t really seen that, at the time. 

“I believe so.” Kevin realised he was smiling, and tried to be cross about it. Because how dare Blackadder weasel his way out of this too, weasel his way out of being the last thing Kevin could be truly, furiously angry about where he had a hope in hell of actually wreaking some revenge?

“So what’s it to be, then?” Blackadder brought his hands together briskly, rubbing palm to palm. Despite the umbrella, his hair was wet, sticking to his forehead in little curls. “You want money, I assume, although that does seem a bit unimaginative even by your standards. Or you want me to look at the proofs for your three-volume comedy of manners set in the hijinks world of military stationery cupboards and recommend it to my publisher. I could name a character after you, I suppose, although the readers might frankly find that a bit confusing. Or I dare say I could offer you my body, just in case that’s what you’ve always wanted and been so very sour about.”

In the silence that followed, Kevin had the gratification of watching Blackadder do a double take, only somewhat diminished by his own inner turmoil as he held the shared gaze, steady.

Now Blackadder looked… nonplussed? Alarmed? Maybe even afraid? 

Kevin hadn’t thought of this. Well, he had a bit of course - one did. Men with his proclivities, in his situation, did anyway. Leafing through acquaintances, trying them on for size, as it were, anything for some novelty when it was just you and your hand.

“Obviously,” Blackadder began, “I speak merely…”

“Oh no.” Kevin sat up straight, grabbing his right crutch up, signalling his readiness to set off. “Oh no, Blackadder, given that I spent the whole of the war somehow failing to thwart any of your petty little schemes to get out of trouble, far be it from me to halt this solution to your current predicament.”

For a moment Blackadder surveyed him, eyes narrow, calculating. It had always been an interesting sensation, hadn’t it, being the focus of all that fiendish attention? 

Then, nonchalant as ever, the man tilted his head. “Very well, Darling. Your place or mine?”

\- 

If Blackadder had for even one second been accommodating, or gentle, or careful of him, Kevin would have stormed out of the flat and never mind the rain outside. 

Never mind that Blackadder had quite a nice flat – of course he did, the git – all steam radiators and velvet curtains and the latest in modern and impersonal and very comfortable furniture. 

But Blackadder was reassuringly rude and abrasive as they made their way from Piccadilly to Bloomsbury and even as they went from the front door to the bedroom. Kevin was determined he wouldn’t falter, wouldn’t allow himself to halt this until the end, and that was strangely easy when Blackadder was bickering and whining and making those ridiculous turns of phrase just as he always had done. 

“If we wrestle to see who buggers who,” Blackadder pointed out, when they were half naked, “it’s quite obvious who’ll win, so shall we just skip forwards?”

“Want to be sure of a buggering, do you?” Kevin wanted to laugh. He hadn’t spoken like this to anyone in years. Hadn’t in so very, very long been around someone and not cared in the slightest what impression he made. 

Then he did laugh, triumphant, gleeful. “I see your blushing, Blackadder. How unexpected. Well perhaps I shall oblige you. If you ask very nicely, of course.”

“You wanted this all along,” Blackadder hissed, the resentful tone at odds with the rapid way he was arranging himself on the bed, straddling Kevin’s waist from above, poised and ready. 

“Of course I did,” Kevin told him, letting the sarcasm pour into his tone. “Quite definitely. When I confronted you in your dugout, when you came flouncing around HQ, I was thinking about getting you on my cock, just like this.”

Blackadder made a somewhat nonverbal response. To be fair to him – which Kevin had no inclination to do – distractions were occurring at that moment. 

“And when I cornered you against the fireplace, just before that whole stupid thing with the spy in the hospital,” Kevin shifted his fingers and sighed happily at the expression on Blackadder’s face. “When I patted you down, one thigh and then the other. This was what I wanted.”

Panting, Blackadder still somehow managed to roll his eyes. He was well stretched now, and starting to move by himself, eager, greedy, on Kevin’s hand. “Why the devil didn’t I think of that? We could have got out of there in an instant, Darling, you and me. They probably wouldn’t have shot us – reasonable chance of a dishonourable discharge, given we held the same rank, maybe a referral to a military asylum. I should have shagged you senseless the first time… the first… when you… oh fuck…”

The conversation at this point undoubtedly deteriorated, but it still felt like a fight, or as much like a fight as anything. Pushing, shoving together, hot and desperate and not without teeth. 

Blackadder lay back afterwards like a cat that’d got the cream. There were white streaks all over his chest and stomach from where he’d finished, hard, and with barely even a touch. 

“You’re a big boy, I’ll give you that much,” Blackadder observed now, wincing slightly as he reached to the bedside cabinet. Retrieving a packet of cigarettes, he offered them Kevin’s way idly, as if not remembering to avoid the courtesy. 

He didn’t look at Kevin’s stump. He didn’t not look at Kevin’s stump. He just sort of… looked at Kevin. 

“How did you know,” Kevin asked, accepting the cigarette and the offer of a light in turn. “How did you know about my leg?”

Blackadder blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling. “When meningitis strikes an entire administrative corps in the wake of the Spanish Flu, one hears about it, it makes the papers.”

“My name didn’t. You had to have checked. Rung up.”

“Well so what if I did? You certainly seem to have stalked me fairly thoroughly over the past decade or so.”

“It’s only been seven years.”

Blackadder looked at him. For a moment, Kevin felt it was all there, in the room with them, all the world of seven years ago, every filthy inch of it. 

“Well perhaps that really wasn’t sufficient time for your personality to improve. Hmm, we never had that lunch did we? Care to tear at pheasant at the Ritz? I can afford it you know.”

“I do know. I know you, Blackadder.”

“Yes, you do, don’t you?” Blackadder’s smile was different somehow, now, than it had ever been before. Perhaps it was the light. 

“How long are you planning to buy my silence about your past with food and sexual intercourse?” 

Blackadder shrugged. “Why not stick around and find out?”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Detailed, spoilery content warning** : In this fic Darling and Blackadder are alive but George is dead, this is referenced. Darling has lost a leg from an attack of meningitis and experiences ableism and some internalised ableism over it. There is also some reference to the way gay men at the time could be treated as mentally unwell and potentially sectioned.


End file.
